Inset: Jonathan Braun (Nassau County Police Department). Background: President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, March 31, 2025 (Pool via AP).
A convicted drug dealer from New York state whose sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump in 2021 is heading back to federal prison for violating his parole, a judge ruled this week.
In September, Jonathan Braun, 41, was found guilty of violating his supervised release by allegedly committing various crimes — including two counts of menacing, as well as one count each of forcible touching, petit larceny, sexual abuse, and failure to pay a fine.
Since August 2024, the defendant has faced myriad allegations from local law enforcement in Nassau County and elsewhere in Long Island.
On Monday, senior U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto ordered Braun to spend 27 months in prison over the allegations.
But the defendant will not spend all of that time behind bars.
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Braun was assessed credit for time already served earlier this year, according to a courtroom report by The New York Times. In sum, the defendant will have to serve 20 months in prison going forward.
Sentencing in the case was originally slated to occur last week, but the presence of an “anonymous letter” complicated the timeline.
On Nov. 5, the original sentencing day, the U.S. Attorney”s Office for the Eastern District of New York announced receipt of the letter.
The Brooklyn-based judge, in turn, directed the defense to respond with their own comments about the letter by the end of the day.
With due haste, Long Island-based daily newspaper Newsday, which has been covering Braun’s case at a granular level for years, filed a motion to have the anonymous letter released publicly.
But, in the end, the mystery document turned out to be much ado about nothing, the judge ruled in a minute order issued Nov. 6.
“Here, the Court received an anonymous letter with no identifying information and containing unverified allegations regarding Mr. Braun,” Matsumoto wrote. “The Court then received submissions from both the government and defense counsel confirming that neither party intend to rely on this anonymous letter in any capacity at sentencing. The Court finds that the anonymous letter is neither relevant nor useful in the judicial process and thus will not consider the letter at sentencing.”
In addition, the judge declined to make the letter public “because the anonymous letter is not a judicial document, no presumption of access attaches and the letter shall remain sealed.”
The allegations contained in that letter are anyone’s guess.
In his September memorandum and order, Matsumoto used the “preponderance of evidence” standard to assess each of the charges filed by Empire State law enforcement over the various allegations of violence and sexual assault leveled against Braun since his grant of clemency.
In sum, Braun was charged with nine separate offenses since he was paroled. Matsumoto determined that the first three allegations did not pass muster. Those three allegations included two counts of assault and one count of child endangerment stemming from an incident during a Sabbath dinner hosted at Braun’s home in late March.
The six other charges were “proven…by a preponderance of the evidence” and span from the summer of last year to March 22.
On July 17, 2024, Braun allegedly threw his wife off a bed and onto the floor, “causing her substantial pain and bruising her legs,” the complaint says, citing the woman as the complaining party. On Aug. 12, 2024, the defendant again allegedly threw his wife to the floor and then punched her in the head, “causing her substantial pain,” dizziness, and “bruising,” according to the criminal complaint obtained by Newsday.
Most of the charges from that second arrest were later dropped; the lone remaining charge is one count of petit larceny.
The larceny charge stems from separate scofflaw behavior behind the wheel. Braun allegedly drove his white Lamborghini and black Ferrari across a Long Island bridge without paying tolls or displaying license plates on either luxury car, accumulating $160 in tolls and fines.
“[S]taff observed toll evasion by the Lamborghini and Ferrari approximately 75 times by the time a complaint by the Nassau County Bridge Authority was made with the Nassau County Police Department,” Matsumoto wrote in his order.
On Feb. 15, Braun was arrested again — on one count of allegedly forcibly touching another person’s private parts. A sexual assault charge was later added. This incident allegedly involved the defendant attacking and groping the live-in nanny employed by his family.
The court’s order recites the allegations in detail and ends with the nanny escaping the alleged attack by locking herself in the bathroom and contacting her husband, Braun’s wife, and police.
“He knows people,” the nanny testified in the case against the defendant, “he’s dangerous and I don’t want him to hurt me.”
On March 22, Braun was arrested for the third time, on charges of menacing in the second and third degrees. This arrest stemmed from a January hospital visit during which an argument with a nurse led to the defendant allegedly swinging an IV pole at the nurse.
“The Court finds credible [the nurse’s] testimony that Defendant swung an IV pole in her direction while yelling repeatedly that he was going to ‘kill’ her, thus intentionally placing [the nurse] in reasonable fear of her physical injury,” Matsumoto writes. “[The nurse] credibly testified that she feared that Defendant was intending, and was going to cause her physical injury when he swung the metal IV pole at her.”
Braun is also accused of threatening another congregant at a religious service after being asked to be quiet. Specifically, Braun allegedly asked the shh-ing man : “Do you know who I am?” and “Do you know what I could have done to you?” The defendant also allegedly “made a reference in Hebrew to the ‘Angel of Death.'” Then, Braun allegedly grabbed the other man’s arm and continued his threats.
“The Court finds that [the congregant’s] testimony was credible and his fear of injury from Defendant was well-founded,” the judge goes on. “Defendant intentionally placed [the congregant] in fear of physical injury by screaming threats at [him] and physically grabbing [his] arm with sufficient force to cause pain.”
The order juxtaposed Braun’s debt with his apparent wealth.
“Defendant is required, as a condition of supervised release, to make payments towards his $100,000 fine under a court-ordered schedule,” Matsumoto notes. “Defendant…reported that his family ‘takes care’ of him financially so he need not use his employment earnings towards his life expenses. Defendant lives in a multi-million dollar property.”
Braun faced up to five years in prison for the parole violations.
During the sentencing hearing, the judge opined about the original 2019 sentencing – saying she expected Braun would make good on his promises to be better all those years ago.
“Very few people are able to achieve this kind of privilege, second chance,” Matsumoto said.
The defendant, for his part, read a statement saying that he had, finally, become a changed person. His attorney also spoke, saying he was acting in a “drug-induced bipolar mania” caused by a designer psychedelic known as 2C-B, according to the Times.
“Mr. Braun was out of control, acting in a manic way,” Federal Defender Kathryn Wozencroft told the court. “Unfortunately, there was no ability to reason with Mr. Braun.”
The 45th and 47th president pardoned Braun in January 2021 as part of a final wave of 143 pardons and commutations.
